


Puppy Love

by Sholio



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Pets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-11
Updated: 2019-07-11
Packaged: 2020-04-12 16:16:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19135621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Steve's parents give him a puppy. The kids are more delighted than Steve is.





	Puppy Love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sandyk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sandyk/gifts).



"Merry Christmas, darling," Steve's mother says, as she pushes a tiny black scrap of fur with a red ribbon around its neck into his arms.

Steve just stares at her. The puppy scrabbles at his sweater with its tiny claws and starts licking his chin. It weighs _nothing._ It's just the tiniest bit of fluff.

"I know you've had a difficult year, love," his mother says, leaning on the kitchen island, one hand curled loosely around a glass of white wine. "I know things are rough at school and your father and I aren't here for you as much as we'd like. We thought you might like a friend."

The puppy makes a tiny squawking noise and crawls up his shoulder and buries its nose in his hair. Steve curls a careful hand around it, all too aware that its small body fits entirely in his palm.

"She's a purebred Pomeranian, eight weeks old. There are papers. And dog food, of course, we asked the breeder for a recommendation -- Steve, honey, are you listening?"

"Yes," Steve says at last, thinking, _Help._

There is no way he's responsible enough for this.

 

*

 

"Your parents gave you a _dog?"_ Dustin's voice on the phone is laced with jealousy. "Dude. You are _so lucky."_

"No," Steve says, watching the puppy toddle around on the beige carpet. His parents are watching TV in the living room; he's in the hall, sitting on the floor and twisting the phone cord around his finger. "No, I am not, because I have no idea how to deal with this. You have pets. You have a turtle, right? And a cat? And a, uh ... a D'art. Anyway. Help."

"There's six inches of fresh snow. If you want my help, you gotta come over to my house."

 

*

 

Dustin's mom is delighted to see him, as always. She coos over the puppy and then Dustin coos over the puppy, and to Steve's total bafflement, their cat and the puppy actually seem to get along. At least they sniff at each other in a friendly kind of way.

"I thought dogs hated cats," Steve says, watching the puppy and the half-grown kitten roll around on the floor.

"Not always," Dustin says. "We used to have a dog, Jeffrey, really sweet English bulldog mix. He got along great with Mews. Maybe your dog is a cat dog."

It figures. "How big do Pomeranians get?"

Dustin holds his hands about a foot apart.

Steve looks down at the tiny combatants. "Maybe it thinks it _is_ a cat."

"It?" Dustin repeats. "Is your dog a boy or a girl?"

"How am I supposed to know?"

Dustin picks up the puppy and rolls it over, making it wave its paws in the air. "Girl," he declares.

"That's right, Mom said 'she'. Uh, I guess there's a name on the paperwork too."

"Your dog came with a name? Spill, dude."

Steve pulls the dog papers out of his back pocket. "Uh, Cinderella Cutie Pie?"

There's a pause and then Dustin says, "Cindy it is, then."

There's an odd hissing sound from the floor. They both look down at the dog, which is weeing on Dustin's carpet. 

"Hey!" Steve yelps. He reaches for it, then jerks his hands back when he realizes he might get peed on. "Aren't they supposed to do that outside? Like, naturally?"

"It's too little to be housebroken yet. You have train it."

Steve stares at Dustin and the whole thing sinks in.

"I cannot do this, I cannot be responsible for an animal, I can barely even be responsible for _me_ \--"

"Steve, calm down --"

"I mean, my girlfriend broke up with me and I had a cactus in fifth grade but I killed it, I killed a _cactus_ , Dustin, the ultimate unkillable plant --"

"Steve --"

"-- just kind of sat there on the windowsill for like a year slowly deflating, and I knew I probably ought to water it at some point but then again I wasn't entirely _sure_ \--"

"Steve!" Dustin grabs him by the arms. "Steve. You can do this. It's a puppy, not a cactus. It'll tell you what it needs, okay?"

"Okay," Steve says faintly.

"Seriously. And we'll help you. The whole Party will help. Are you good, dude?"

"Yeah, sure. I'm good." And he kind of almost means it.

 

*

 

It turns out that if he _wanted_ to have six eighth graders underfoot at all times during Christmas break, he really couldn't have come up with a better excuse than getting a dog.

"Why are you here? _You_ already have a dog," Steve says, watching Will playing with the puppy on the winter-withered grass and patchy snow in the backyard.

"Yeah, and Chester's a great dog, but he's also like ten years old; he doesn't run around much anymore." Will rolls over on his back and giggles as Cindy vigorously licks his chin. "Oh, hey! Do you think Cindy would like to meet Chester?"

"I, uh, I don't know," Steve says nervously, looking at the tiny size of the puppy. Will's dog isn't _that_ big, but what if he hurts her?

Damn it, he's thinking like a _parent._ This is bad.

The kids are surprisingly helpful at giving him a hand with figuring out things like how much to feed Cindy and when, how to house-train her, and all of that useful pet stuff. They're also helpful at tiring her out, because something that tiny should _not_ have as much energy as she does. Even when the kids have run her around all afternoon, she'll crash and sleep all evening, then wake up bright-eyed and waggy-tailed as soon as he goes up to his room for the night.

But ... that's not such a bad thing. He learns to play quiet games of tug-of-war with her in his room, Cindy making tiny little growls while Steve tries to laugh quietly, and then she'll fall asleep on his chest or curled up on the quilt next to him.

It helps with the nightmares more than he would have believed possible.

And then there are the kids. Not gonna lie, he's been feeling on some level that after everything with the monsters and ... stuff, there's no way that he and the kids, Dustin included, aren't going to go their separate ways. He's going to go back to his normal life, and the kids are going to figure out that he's not as cool as they think he is (and what's his life come to, that a bunch of eighth-graders figuring out he's uncool is the worst thing he can think of?).

But now there's this puppy, and suddenly his house is right up there with the Wheeler and Byers places as a neighborhood hangout for the rugrat set. His parents seem baffled, but they don't really seem to _mind_ that much; they're used to Steve's friends coming over, even if it's been awhile since his friends were this age. And, well, it's been awhile since any of Steve's friends came over, so maybe they don't really think too much about Steve's cool teenage friends being swapped out for a bunch of middle-school-age dorks. (They're old and out of touch. Maybe fourteen and eighteen seem close enough to adults anyway.)

And so, instead of quiet days of being all too alone with his own thoughts, there are afternoons hanging out with the kids, watching movies and playing with the puppy. When school starts up again, there are mornings when he picks up Dustin so the rugrat doesn't have to bike through the snow. And there are evenings with Cindy in his lap while he watches TV, and nights with a small furry body curled up next to his shoulder, her quiet breathing and sleepy little yips chasing away the night demons.

And he's ... happy. Yeah. He's happy.


End file.
